Growing into the Image of Christ

Once upon a time there was a young prince. He was very handsome except for one thing: He had a crooked back. This birth defect caused him great sorrow. It also kept him from being the kind of prince that he really wanted to be for his people.

One day the prince’s father asked the best sculptor in his kingdom to make a statue of the prince. It should portray him, however, not with a crooked back, but with a straight back. The king wanted his son to see himself as he could be. When the sculptor finished the statue, it was truly magnificent.

It was so lifelike that you could mistake it for the prince. The king placed the statue in the prince's private garden. Each day when the prince went to the garden to study, he looked longingly at the statue. Then one day he noticed that when he did this, his heart beat faster and his body tingled. Months passed. Soon the people began to say to one another, “The prince’s back doesn’t seem as crooked as it once did.” When the prince heard this, his heart beat even faster and his body tingled even more.

Now the prince began to go to the garden more often. He spent hours standing before the statue, studying it closely, and meditating on it. Then one day a remarkable thing happened. The prince found himself standing as straight as the statue.

That story is a kind of parable of you and me. We too were born to be a prince or a princess. But we too had a defect that kept us from being the kind of person we were meant to be.

Then one day our Father in heaven sent his only Son, Jesus, into the world. Jesus is the perfect image of what you and I were born to be. He stands spiritually straight and beautiful. When we look at Jesus, our heart beats faster, our body tingles, and we begin to dream. But that’s as far as our story goes. It’s still unfinished; it’s still incomplete. Whether we become like Jesus or not is something still to be decided. Whether our story will have a happy ending, like the story of the prince, is something still to be determined.

If our life is to have a happy ending, if we are to grow into the image of Christ ­ as the prince grew into the statue’s image ­ we must do what the prince did. We must begin to study and to ponder Jesus, as the prince studied and pondered the statue, not just with the eyes and ears of the body, but also with the eyes and ears of the mind, the soul, and the heart. And if we do this, someday we too will become like Jesus, who was meek and humble of heart; and our story, like the story of the prince, will have a happy ending.